A former personal assistant to Sean Combs testified on Thursday about a grueling work environment in which she was subjected to sleep deprivation, violence and multiple instances of sexual assault by her boss.
The woman took the stand at Mr. Combs’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial under the pseudonym “Mia,” but jurors were shown her real name. In the witness box, she described a fast-paced, often exciting job that could quickly descend into chaos based on the fluctuation of Mr. Combs’s moods.
“The highs were really high and the lows were really, really low,” she testified.
During her eight years working for Mr. Combs, Mia said, he would lash out if he was unsatisfied with her performance, in one instance throwing a bowl of spaghetti at her and, in another, a computer — both of which missed.
“He’s thrown me against the wall,” Mia testified. “He’s thrown me into a pool. He’s thrown an ice bucket on my head. He slammed my arm into a door.”
Looking down, her voice quieting to a whisper, she said that Mr. Combs had also sexually assaulted her multiple times. Mia, who started working for Mr. Combs in 2009 when she was in her mid-20s, testified that a few months after she started the job, he kissed her and put his hand up her dress at his 40th birthday party at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
“I thought it would never happen again,” she testified, her voice shaking.
But later in her employment, Mia said, she was asleep at his home in Los Angeles — the bedroom unlocked because Mr. Combs forbade her to lock doors in his home — when he entered the room, climbed on top of her and penetrated her. Another time, she said, she was packing a bag for him in his closet when he appeared beside her with his penis exposed, grabbed her head and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
Mia, who wept at times while recalling the encounters, testified that each time, she felt unable to say no, fearing retaliation.
“I couldn’t tell him no about a sandwich — I couldn’t tell him no about anything,” she said. “There was no way I could tell him no, because then he would know that I thought what he was doing was wrong and then I would be a target.”
Mr. Combs has vehemently denied sexually assaulting anyone. As Mia described the allegations of sexual assault, Mr. Combs, who wore a gray crew-neck sweater and a collared shirt, shook his head in apparent disapproval. At times, he would look to the jurors, searching their faces.
As Mr. Combs’s personal assistant, Mia was told to stay attached to her Blackberry at all times and stay within Mr. Combs’s eyesight, according to a document that listed Mia’s marching orders that was shown to jurors. Mr. Combs, the document read, could “ask you to do 17,000 things at one time that range from cracking his knuckles to writing his next movie to doing his taxes.”
Once, Mia said, she worked for five days without sleep, until her vision began to blur and she burst into tears, prompting Mr. Combs to let her off the clock. (She said her initial base salary was $50,000.)
Mr. Combs is not accused of sex trafficking Mia but of subjecting her to forced labor — including sexual activity — through violence and threats of serious harm. The forced labor allegation is part of a broader racketeering conspiracy charge that accuses Mr. Combs of directing a criminal enterprise that helped him commit crimes and cover them up over two decades.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him. His lawyers have acknowledged that he was responsible for domestic violence, but they vehemently denied the existence of a criminal conspiracy, asserting that he was the head of entirely lawful businesses that were disconnected from his private sex life. They have argued that the sex at issue in the case was entirely consensual.
For prosecutors, Mia’s testimony helps establish a pattern of how Mr. Combs treated women, and corroborates the account of Casandra Ventura, the music mogul’s on-and-off girlfriend of 11 years, whose recounting of brutal violence, meticulous control and marathon sexual encounters with male prostitutes, known as “freak-offs,” are at the heart of the government’s case.
Mia testified that she was one of the employees tasked with setting up for and cleaning up after what she knew as “hotel nights” with Ms. Ventura. Afterward, she recalled, the hotel rooms looked like “a nightmare,” describing seeing candle wax drippings, baby oil on the furniture and walls, and sometimes bloodstains. (Ms. Ventura testified that she was expected to have freak-offs while menstruating.)
Once, Mia said, she observed Ms. Ventura get anxious ahead of an upcoming “hotel night” with Mr. Combs, saying Ms. Ventura “started getting stomach issues because of it.”
Mr. Combs directed Mia to “keep tabs” on Ms. Ventura, she testified. One night, she said, she was told by Mr. Combs to keep Ms. Ventura in a hotel room. They were invited to a house party hosted by Prince, she said, and “Cass and I debated like little kids if we should sneak out of the house.”
The women attended the party, Mia testified, dancing and having fun until Mia saw Mr. Combs arrive. When Mr. Combs caught up to Ms. Ventura in the front yard, he began attacking her, Mia testified, until Prince’s security intervened. The next day, Mia was suspended without pay for insubordination, she said.
She said she did not report the physical abuse to the police because “I believed that Puff’s authority was above the police,” using one of Mr. Combs’s nicknames.
After several years working as a personal assistant, Mia was promoted to work on developing films and television shows for Mr. Combs, but she said she continued to perform similar tasks.
In the defense’s opening statement, Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, said the upcoming cross-examination of Mia will surface messages she wrote to Mr. Combs throughout her employment expressing her “unbelievable love” for him.
Earlier on Thursday, the defense finished its cross-examination of Deonte Nash, a stylist who worked with Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura for years and maintains a close friendship with her. He said that Ms. Ventura confided in him several times that she did not want to participate in the “freak-offs” that prosecutors say Mr. Combs demanded and directed.
Xavier Donaldson, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, focused questioning on an instance when Mr. Nash said he left a hotel room at Ms. Ventura’s request because Mr. Combs “wanted to invite a guy over,” suggesting that he must not have had concern for Ms. Ventura’s safety at the time.
“I always did,” Mr. Nash replied.
Mr. Nash detailed several instances in which he said he witnessed Mr. Combs physically abuse Ms. Ventura, including a 2013 incident in which he said Mr. Combs grabbed Ms. Ventura by the hair, pulled her off a couch and started hitting her after she had failed to answer her phone.
Mia corroborated the attack during her testimony. She said that she and Mr. Nash moved to try to stop Mr. Combs, but when she jumped on his back, Mr. Combs threw her against the wall.
“It was the first time I realized the severe danger that we were actually in,” Mia testified.
Both witnesses said Mr. Combs continued to strike Ms. Ventura, stopping only after her head hit the edge of a bed frame and she began to bleed. As everyone in the room realized the severity of Ms. Ventura’s injury, Mr. Nash recalled, Mr. Combs told them “look what y’all made me do.”
Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times who focuses on popular music and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast (Deluxe).”
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